. Source: Shutterstock

You can’t stay complacent if you want to stay ahead of the digital marketing curve

WITH the number of social and mobile media platforms increasing, digital marking capabilities are constantly evolving. If you’re not keeping up with this evolution, then your brand could be missing out on a vital chance to showcase your relevance and build relationships with consumers.

According to Ajay Yadav, CEO and founder of Roomi, to stay ahead of the game, it is crucial to continuously challenge your assumptions and be aggressive in seeking out knowledge.

“At Roomi, we’ve built a culture that embraces a willingness to fail in order to succeed,” Yadav said to e27. “I encourage my team not to see failed strategies or tactics as personal or company failures, but instead as positive learning experiences that strengthen their strategic outlook moving forward.”

After examining and experimenting with digital media industry trends, Yadav and his team at Roomi offer the following suggestions to yield better insights and innovation in the digital marketing game.

Keep up with industry changes

Seek out the knowledge of successful leaders of digital marketing. Source: Shutterstock

Whilst cold calls and sales emails may seem like the bain of your life, they can actually provide valuable insights into innovative practices within the digital landscape and what successful companies in the industry are doing.

Unlike large corporations who have long campaign development periods, startups have the advantage of being nimble and be early adopters for new media strategies. For instance, Roomi were quick to utilize Instagram as both an engagement tool and an advertising platform.

Attend industry events and inexpensive classes

It doesn’t harm to reach out to those people whose digital marketing strategies you admire. At Roomi, employees are encouraged to use online educational resources to build knowledge and skills in a variety of areas.

Get to know your customer

Understanding your customer is vital in finding out how best to reach and appeal to them. Your startup can do this by reading external research studies found in magazine or journal articles. If your budget sees fit, utilize the power of surveys or focus groups to get a good insight into your customer’s mindset, behavior and reactions to your product.

As well as this, the examination of internal data can help you to create “user profiles”.

Use this to challenge assumptions concerning who they are, their likes and needs, and user behavior. By analyzing this data objectively, you can get a real sense of how consumers are actually using your product, and predict future trends.

User profiles are crucial to help businesses get to know their audiences. Source: Shutterstock

Test, test, test

In order to optimize success in digital marketing, it is important to take note of which platforms are most active as well as what types of messages are getting in the most traffic. Yadav also suggests being sensitive and objective in the use of language. Speaking in the same tone that your target audience uses would make you more relatable and gives them more of an incentive to engage.

When promoting your brand, it is also important to ensure that you are doing so with the customer’s benefit in mind, and not the product. By doing this, customers can better envisage how your product or service can make a difference in their lives.

“The best lesson I’ve learned is that no matter your company’s size, staying nimble and testing new strategies can lead to vast exposure and growth,” said Yadav. “You don’t need to be an expert right away to succeed in a new task, but you always need to be motivated and willing to learn.”